Sears Hoping Shoppers Will Embrace Their New Digital Approach

Hoping to stop the freefall that has been their revenue stream over the past few years, Sears is hoping to convert customers into online shoppers, complete with more specific and localized online targeting.

According to Bloomberg the company is going all in on digital. Their strategy is to further combine online and in-store sales to create a more cohesive omni-channel experience.

From the article:

Sears has also taken a page from Amazon.com (AMZN) in allowing third-party retailers to sell goods on its online real estate. Shoppers can now order at least 75 million products on the department-store chain’s Internet platform, most of which aren’t car batteries, kitchen appliances, or the other Sears staples. The company has even created an in-house app-development team.

So has the digital expansion by the pioneer of the mail-order-catalog age moved the needle? Not quite yet.

Some Web visitors are more valuable than others, and this is where the Sears strategy might pay off even if its online traffic trails key rivals. Shop Your Way, the member-loyalty program launched three years ago, is being deployed in lockstep with Sears’s e-commerce efforts. The program already has tens of millions of users and accounts for more than 60 percent of revenue at U.S. Sears and Kmart locations.